rapture
by sea-salt kisses
Summary: When Demyx is little, his mother tells him the story of The Dreamweaver. — Zemyx, AkuRoku. AU. Birthday gift for Ninny-na.


This story is a birthday present for the darling **Ninny-na**, my best friend and the platonic love of my life. You can find her under my favourite authors, and if you're into Seiner, AkuHay (eww, right?), or the occasional AkuRoku, you should go check her out! She happens to like Zemyx, and fairy tales, so I combined the two of them as best I could into one. The one thing I couldn't do for her was write her fluff – that was what this was intended to be, but it didn't quite turn out that way. I hope she loves it nonetheless, even though it has horrible tense issues and needs to be beta'd something horrendous.

Happy birthday, RiRi. :) I hope you forgive the two extra days.

**A note about the story:** It isn't really your typical love story. The storyline itself is dark in places; expect morbidity and yes, there is character death – none of the lead characters die though, so perhaps that will be of comfort to you. The story is actually one of my more invasive (sexual?) pieces, but you have to squint a little to see it. And, as with all great fairy tales, there is a happy ending.

Also as a side note, this baby churned in at 6,700ish words. I don't know if you're familiar with my work, but 6,700 is like me birthing a watermelon. So if you fave this story, _please please please_ **review**. I spent hours on this piece, so it's only common courtesy that you review, especially if you take the two seconds to add this to your favourites list. Take the two minutes to review along with it, please. A word or two makes all the difference.

* * *

**rapture  
****n.**

1. Extreme pleasure, happiness or excitement.  
2. Transportation of a person from one place to another.  
**(obs.)** 3. abduction, rape, ravishment

Everyone remembers childhood stories. Tales of fantasy and adventure, of life and of death, told by parents or grandparents or siblings or uncles and aunts, around the fireplace or in the safe confines of a bed. These fables are filled with magic and chivalric knights, blushing princesses and happily ever afters. The stories we remember as children are carefree and whimsical, filled with light and poetry and the morals of life, truth, and virtue.

When Demyx is little, his mother tells him the story of The Dreamweaver.

* * *

He came to their valley hundreds of years ago as a bookkeeper, his mother says, arriving on horseback from the distant mountains; his presence glazed in dark aura and sharp eyes, the sort of eyes that slice through bone and cleave muscle from flesh. The townspeople were wary of his harsh consonants and rolling vowels, of the way his eyes darted about and the serpentine grace to his movements.

He set up shop in an abandoned barn on the outskirts of the village and established set hours, never tarrying far beyond his own threshold. The men and women of the village feared him, and their steps hastened upon treading near and around his domain.

It was the children rather than the adults who loved and accepted the bookkeeper; the children who would plead with their mothers for a few extra coins in order to be told a tale by the man. The townsfolk whispered of his wild and outlandish stories, of his dark, grim fairy tales and the bewitched look about the children's large eyes as they scampered off home after an afternoon of sprawling fables. It raised a fear in the hearts of the villagers, a simpering question in the backs of their minds. A blaze lit amongst the more treacherous hearts; _witchcraft_. Dark magic.

But no one had the courage or gall to challenge or question the man, and for months, the shop was kept in pristine condition. He kept his floors freshly swept and his lamps oiled and glistening. There was nothing offsetting about the man on the surface – he himself was immaculately groomed and kept, particularly for a man with no wife to keep his hygiene in check. It was in his eye that the villagers found their fears metastasizing around, for only one eye was visible. The man's dark hair grew heavily across the side of his face, the only sloppy, unkempt thing about him. The visible eye was large, blue, and venomous – leering. But their children trusted him, and so it went without question. For many months, the little town lived in quiet apprehension.

It was in his eighth month in the village that the first child went missing; a small, lovely little doll of a girl with gingerbread hair and skin white as frosting. The girl belonged to the wealthiest family of the village, and was well-known as the most beautiful of the town's young women; a prospect the parents of the lads in the village hoped to procure. Her body was found in the forest, her back rested gingerly against a tree trunk, a hole the shape of a wheel gaping wide in her chest.

Next came the disappearance of the baker's son, followed soon after by the banker's eldest boy, vanishing into thin air one night from his bed. A few months after his body was recovered, the constable found the corpse of the little homeless boy who ran errands for sixpence, his body nailed to a tree with his heart half-consumed on the forest floor beneath him.

The townspeople stirred into a frenzy, horrified and baffled by the disappearances. The souls convinced months before of wrongdoing blamed the foreigner for the loss of their children, coaxing the less swayed into uproar. Feverish meetings were held in the old courthouse, townsfolk stacked to the rafters to argue and debate the best course of action. Fathers and mothers pleaded with their gods for justice in the old church house, the bell ringing incessantly through the night. The town council met until the late hours of the morning, eyes drooping and lips set in grim lines. Under careful meditation, a mutiny was planned.

On the eve of his second year in the village, a group of twenty men stormed the bookshop in search of the bookkeeper. The man was roused from his sleep by large hands gripping at his arms, his legs, the curve of his throat; they threw his struggling form down the stairs, his body kicked swiftly from his gaping doorway onto the street soon after. Two men held him down as another set fire to his shop, the oiled walls and pristinely groomed floor alighting in a conflagration that crested in less than a few moments. Stories were told for decades after of the smoke rising miles high in the dark autumn sky; of the children who ran from their houses toward the fire, screaming and begging and pleading for their parents to repent.

The bookkeeper was thrown from the village into the treeline of the forest, threatened and cajoled and exiled into the deepest fathoms of the woods. It is rumoured that the children of the village were tied to their beds those terrified weeks that followed, for they struggled to traipse after him into the black glen, eyes permanently pinned open in a fervid daze. It took months for the hysteria to abate, though slowly but surely, the townspeople returned to the old way of life. Their gazes no longer steeled upon sight of the old barn-house at the village outskirt, for it lay still, a pile of blackening soot and ash.

Few dare to tarry far beyond the dark forest treeline even now, for all who meet him know him for what he is, and refuse him company or compassion. Women cry out at the sight of him; daughters and sons shy away and hide behind their father's legs. He is exiled from society, and so very, very lonely; the sort of estrangement that looms with a quiet darkness, a desolation that seeps into the bones and inters itself into the very core.

He exists now as a specter, a figment of a being that lives amongst the gnarled trees of the old forest; a phantom who cloaks himself in darkness. No one knows how a being such as his was formed or from whence he came; only that he is shunned; for although a powerful, omniscient creature, he possesses one barbaric flaw, a vice that ostracizes and torments him – he is a being cursed, a forsaken monster banished to life without a heart.

The weaver makes his home deep in the forest, out of sight and mind of the scorn of the town's people. Every so often, he crafts beautiful, deceptive dreams of sunshine and happiness in order to lure little children below the moonlight into the mist. Children are the easiest minds to breach, for they are innocent, and simple. They follow his figments of reality without question, traipsing deep into the belly of the old forest, under drooping vines and thorny underbrush, until they reach the dark lagoon in the centre. It is there, they say, that the illusionist rips out their hearts and swallows them whole, until all that is left is a human shell. The hearts of those without hatred or fear are the sweetest sustenance; with age and wisdom comes distrust and anger that taints the flesh and corrupts the blood.

The children lured into the mist follow without question, and without obstacle. They are never seen again, though some whisper that their voices rise late in the midnight hour, singing sweetly and softly in hopes of luring their own victims, so that they may acquire a heart once again.

* * *

The story is Demyx's favourite, one he begs his mother to tell him again and again.

His mother, a fair and gentle woman, only tells the story late at night when sleep proves evasive for her little boy. The tale that is that of the weaver is a long one, and to tell it often would be tedious and wasteful. Instead, she saves it for a most useful purpose, as for a child of his age Demyx sleeps very fitfully, plagued with dreams of darkness and swirling, iced black water. Sometimes he awakes in a cold sweat, clutches tightly to himself and cries pitifully into the night. It takes some time, but with his mother's hands across his face, the boy can finally lull off to sleep.

His father rapidly loses patience when night after night the child stumbles to his mother and father's bedroom, tugging at their quilted comforter with an expression of utmost terror, and fear. His mother stands in stark contrast to his father; an angelic woman who soothes the man's ire and nestles Demyx to her bosom. She never hesitates to heft the boy to her and make the grueling trip across the house in order to tuck him back into his cot.

Only when even her cheek kisses and lilting night songs can't bid him rest, the lady pulls him from his bed and toward the creaking rocking chair nestled in the corner. He clambers onto her lap to perch there and lay his head against her chest, breathing deep her smell of warmth and baking, the promise of cinnamon cookies and ginger snaps thick in the air. He lounges against her as her chest rises and falls, and he drifts to sleep with the rocking rhythm of her breath and her drawling words of The Dreamweaver.

* * *

The other children in the village fear the story, and for good cause. Demyx makes no illusions of understanding their horror, instead choosing not to speak his own heart and risk rejection in the face of his peers.

It is a chilly day in November when Demyx first speaks of his fondness for the story at recess, the other children gasping and gaping and shying away from the strange boy with a penchant for the macabre. The dirty blond is left alone for the rest of play time, to fiddle idly with the pretty Kairi's abandoned china doll and wonder why everyone has decided to desert him to huddle on the other side of the playground, shooting him glances of repulsion and confused loathe. When Demyx seeks them out to play that afternoon, they ridicule him, calling him 'freak' and 'mama's boy,' throwing stones and sticks and all manner of hateful words at his retreating back. The little boy stifles his cries until he reaches his house's thatched wooden fence, wilting against it once he's sure he's out of eyeshot and weeping softly into his knees.

It's quiet now, except for the lull of his own rhythmic sobs.

The little farm boy from down the lane happens upon him not too much later, blue eyes going wide at the sight of the strange-haired boy he sees walking to school sometimes. The little boy perches beside Demyx where he leans precariously against the fence and frowns beautifully, running soothing fingers through Demyx's hair. "Don't cry," little Roxas pleads, Demyx's eyes opening and locking on sprawling, endless blue. The boy's voice is soft and gentle like spun sugar, lilting and feminine and tinged with a timbre of naivety. The elder sniffles quietly, flushing slightly at being caught in the act of weeping like a child.

When Roxas grips his face between two calloused, well-worn little hands, Demyx gives up on propriety. He winds his arms around the other boy, burying his face into the soft stomach, inhaling sharply before his tears slip free, wetting the rough cotton. Roxas has the grace not to flinch, instead plopping carefully down into the other's lap and nestling their bodies together, comfortingly close. Demyx notes the smell of leather and working sweat clinging to the boy's throat, and the gentle stench of ivy and mint permeating the little boy's shirt.

That night, Demyx takes Roxas into his home and feeds the boy his mother's best chicken broth with broiled carrots and sweet cabbage. If he remembers nothing else for the rest of his life, he will remember the depth of gratitude in the younger boy's eyes at a warm, home-cooked meal. Demyx studies the concave visage of the boy's abdomen and makes promises to himself to feed the child more often, if only because he is the only one who has yet to run away.

* * *

Within a few months of harsh treatment from the bullies at school and the comfort Demyx finds in Roxas, the two boys become best friends; inseparable and joined tightly at the hip. They play together in the brook past Old Hill Church, icy water splashing their pant legs and bidding them laugh happily into the evening hours, long after the fireflies have vanished into the darkness. Roxas is ten, a farmer boy whose father won't let him attend school because it interferes with his ability to work the corn fields. His hands are tiny, wrought with scars and callouses from shucking corn or chopping wood. He speaks softly at all times, even when he's laughing alongside Demyx, the sound like wind-chimes or Demyx's mother's singing. Demyx knows that Roxas is a beautiful, beautiful boy, and as the older, fourteen-year-old member of their partnership, he feels the need to protect him from all the other boys at school.

Roxas's lack of acknowledgment of the other children in the village leads them all to assume that he's stupid; a lame, retarded farmer boy with no hope for any future but planting seeds and plowing earth. They tease him when they pass his father's farm, picking ears from the corn stalks that tower near the shoddy crop enclosure. The small boy gnashes his teeth but never lashes out, instead fixing his eyes on the ground, counting quietly in his head until his tormentors leave.

There is one boy in particular that Demyx feels the need to shade his friend from the most. The butcher's son, Axel, a tall, brash boy whose laugh is serrated like the knives hanging from his father's shop wall. Roxas hides behind Demyx when Axel comes to call, the redhead always equipped with snark and cruelty in his analysis of the 'stupid, illiterate farm rat.' Axel is fifteen, the eldest of his two siblings, and the heir to the richest fortune in the town. The elder boy wasn't around too often, or else Roxas and Demyx would never be able to play in the stream or fish for bream in the lake near the village square. Axel spent the majority of his time in the company of Saix, Marluxia, and Larxene, and thankfully, Demyx was able to steer Roxas from their peering eyes more oft than not.

Of them all, Roxas feared Larxene more than he feared Axel, for the girl's smile meant certain pain. Larxene is fourteen, an apprentice of Axel's father at the butcher shop and as heartless as they came. Her nails grew long and sharp like claws, and when Roxas would walk home alone after spending the day with Demyx, he would race the shadows that pooled beneath the trees and along the lane, for on certain days the girl would hide in the darkest crevices, jumping out only to rake her horrible fingers down Roxas's arm, or push the boy relentlessly into the mud.

Roxas never mentions it to anyone, but sometimes in the dark of the night, he wakes up and cries out desperately into the darkness, hands clutching at invisible cuts along his arms and lips forming Demyx's name uselessly into the roiling air.

* * *

On the eve of Roxas's eleventh birthday, he and Demyx celebrate on the bank of the stream they frequent. Roxas brings along an old, ratted quilt to serve as make-shift carpeting, and Demyx fills his mother's old picnic basket with sandwiches and hard-boiled eggs and cold, freshly squeezed milk preserved in metal tins. The two boys chat amiably as they stroll to their destination, footsteps echoing softly amidst the trees.

For Roxas's birthday present, Demyx sewed together new working gloves from scraps of leather he picked up from the trading post. The merchants who came through the village always paid him in useless trinkets when he ran errands for them, and in Demyx's armoire lay bits of cloth and silk alongside colourful beads and glistening threads. He had sat down alongside his mother at their kitchen table, watching as she instructed him on the proper way to bind the bits of cloth together to form a sturdy pair of gloves to protect the boy's hands from cuts and scrapes. They had taken over two weeks to perfect, as Demyx's clumsy threading had to be ripped apart and redone several times.

Looking at the boy's face now, all the strife and turmoil had been worth it. Roxas smiled radiantly at the gloves, a sight more lovely than any Demyx had seen. He praised himself for concocting another gift for the boy in addition to the gloves, a small bracelet weaved of the threads and beads from the merchant's payment. Grinning happily, Demyx moved to rifle through the picnic basket where he hid the tiny parcel when Roxas was busy setting out the picnic blanket. His fingertips had just closed around the package when sudden movement to the left caught his eyes.

The blond barely had time to warn Roxas before Larxene's well aimed swing brought down a formidable branch against the younger boy's head. Roxas was flung to the side with the brunt of the blow, a hurt cry emitting from him that fueled the smile that rose to Larxene's lips.

Demyx gasped before his brows lowered in fury. Teal blue eyes flickered to Roxas, taking in the way the boy's arm bent awkwardly beneath him, the stillness in his posture. His blood cooled in time with his heartbeat's quickening. Roxas... Roxas was _hurt_.

There was no time to avenge the fallen boy before a sharp pain blossomed against Demyx's right leg, forcing him to crumple over onto the picnic basket, splintering it to pieces.

"We heard it was farm rat's birthday today," Larxene crooned, tossing the branch off to the side where it struck Roxas harshly in the back. The boy cried out again, a piteous, soft plea. "We were _so_ _hurt _you didn't invite us to the party."

"Leave him... alone..." Demyx breathes, clutching the back of his leg as moisture seeps through his pant leg. _Blood_. Larxene laughs harshly, heels clicking against the rocks of the shore as she makes her way to the crumpled boy on the bank. There is silence as she stops before him, the only sound the boy's heartrendingly soft sobs. Demyx pulls himself to his knees as Larxene pulls her foot back, ramming a sharp heel into the boy's side. Roxas cries out in agony, flinching away from her assault.

"STOP IT!" Demyx yells, stumbling to his feet in an effort to protect the boy. He managed a few staggering steps when a hard fist slams into his jaw, sending him spinning.

"Don't worry," Larxene jeers, driving her heel into Roxas again and again. "I won't beat your little boyfriend _too_ bad."

It's Saix's fist that collides with Demyx next, the first punch not quite enough to bring the boy to his knees. Demyx feels something crack when a clenched fist connects with his shoulder, the next harsh strike falling against his left abdomen. He doesn't feel the pain yet; it's dulled by the screams and cries coming from Roxas on the river bed.

"That's enough, Larxene," Axel drawls, seemingly materializing from the shadows beneath the treeline. The girl ignores his words, continuing to catapult Roxas closer and closer to the water's edge. It's another few seconds before Axel's voice booms across the glen. "Larxene, stop it. You're killing him!"

One last drive of boot to torso and Roxas's cries stop altogether. Demyx's heart beats faster and faster in his chest. _She's killed him. She's killed him. Oh no, she's killed him. I didn't protect him, oh no, oh Roxas, oh please, no no __**no**__._.. As if sensing Demyx's turmoil, the blond witch turns to glare at him, green-blue eyes rippling with electric malice. "He's not dead. He's just where he belongs; out of consciousness."

"..._Witch_," he manages, struggling one more time to get to his feet. There's a shuffling of feet nearby before Marluxia's boot connects with the side of his head, and Demyx remembers nothing more.

"Serves 'em right," the girl drawls, sparing the little farm boy one last glance before spitting on his chest. "The little retarded boy and the Dreamweaver's pet – they deserve each other."

The girl leaves without sparing a backward glance for the two left immobile on the riverbed, the soft clack of her heels against the rocks accentuating the seconds that pass in silence. Marluxia leaves with her, trailing off in her footsteps until only Saix and Axel gaze with vague detachment at the bodies on the stream edge. Saix leaves with an offer of walking home with Axel, but the taller boy declines on the premise of basking in the afterglow a little longer.

When Saix leaves, and the glen is silent once again, Axel's eyes flicker to the little farmer boy. The one he watches walk home sometimes, the one whom his father gives extra scraps from the back room because the boy's father hardly feeds him. A weight settles on Axel's heart as he takes in the broken body, his feet drawing him closer to check for a pulse. He's reassured at the soft, gentle beating he feels against his fingertips, soft and gentle like the boy it belongs to. Axel brushes blond hair away from the boy's forehead, caked with blood and sweat and tears. For a moment, he feels something strange and foreign. Something that makes him do something Axel has never done – _regret_.

The unwelcome feeling is shoved away as Axel stands up, snarling at the boy and giving his limp body one last jab for good measure, the organ deep within his chest constricting at the way the body whimpers, even in unconsciousness. The elder boy cocks his head back, spitting dispassionately at Demyx's crumpled body, before evaporating into the darkness of the path.

Deep within the bowels of the old forest, something stirs.

* * *

That night, Demyx dreams.

He's sure he's been here before, for the sudden recollection of his surroundings slaps hard across his psyche. The water before him spreads slick and wide like black glass, calm and gilded with tendrils of light. Above the dark lake is a mist that clots around the cresting waves, rings itself about the trees standing tall and impassive behind him. He is barefoot and his toes sink into the grey muck lacing the water's edge. His footing squelches beneath him as he adjusts his weight, the fog reflecting off the teal of his eyes; a chilly glaucoma.

The air is cold and still. Nothing stirs; as if the forest is held under a spell. No cicadas hum and no water bugs skitter across the top of the lagoon surface. Through it all, Demyx cannot shake the feeling of familiarity – of comfort he feels, even amongst the icy calm, the emptiness.

There's a tinny sort of tune that resonates behind him. It's faint and it whispers over the tumultuous silence. But if he cocks his head and he listens just right, it almost sounds like an old lullaby.

Demyx turns his head, and is confronted with a sharp, piercing blue, an overwhelming weight on his chest and a thousand pinpricks of light, blinding him and filling his veins until his very blood is glutted in radiance; hazy and milky like the stars that litter the night sky.

He feels a strange hollowness in his chest, a feeling he can't quite define; but then the lights go out and he tumbles into obsidian emptiness, and remembers nothing more.

* * *

Roxas's arm is broken. Demyx knows this because he was the one to carry the boy home, the one to see the furious ire in his father, to fear for the wrath Roxas will face when his eyes open at first light.

It's a week before Demyx sees him again. A long, drawling week that drags on like the ending of a harsh winter, settling in over Demyx's body and making him fear.

When Roxas finally makes his way past the rickety gate of the elder's house, there are fresh bruises sprouting along his limbs, a swelling purple infecting one blue eye; wounds that were not inflicted the day of the boy's birthday – Demyx realizes with almost sickening speed just who bestowed the new injuries on the boy. Judging by the blood tainting the abdomen of his garb, there are deeper injuries hidden behind clothing. The mere thought of it makes Demyx's stomach clench and his eyes narrow.

The little blonde is wearing a filthy brown smock with torn work pants and the gloves Demyx gave him for his birthday. His right arm twists at an odd angle like the protractors at the town library, and Demyx bites down on his tongue to keep from saying something he'll regret. Instead, he reaches out ginger hands to touch the boy's horrifically fractured limb. Roxas inhales his breath in a hiss, the gasp emissing soon after from between clenched teeth as white and perfectly shaped as seed pearls. The hollowness from a vaguely remembered dream mounts in Demyx's chest, the dirty blond setting his jaw with a new determination.

"I'm forbidden to come back," the boy whispers, the words a soft, breaking tenor that cracks in a way that lets Demyx know just how close his beautiful boy is to breaking. "I'm of no use anymore with a broken arm." The blond's fingers tremble around the fabric they clutch.

At fourteen, Demyx feels his heart begin to harden, and he cradles Roxas's head in his hands, the little farmer boy sniffling with a gross smacking sound of mucus sucking back into his skull. It's obvious he's been broken for a while, and Demyx holds him closer, fighting the urge to scream out.

In the end, his mother lays out a pallet before the fireplace, and it's only after Demyx has drifted off to sleep atop his cot that he is awakened by the boy's piercing shriek as his mother shifts the broken bone of his arm back into place, wrapping the splint tight and pulling the sobbing, distraught Roxas into her arms. She shushes him quietly, as Demyx's father tightens his jaw and gazes angrily into the fireplace.

That night, Demyx dreams once again of swirling fog, this time a deep, rich purple. The same haunting shade of blue drifts in and out of the fog, and if Demyx tilts his head and squints just right, he can hear the same melody from the first dream, and register the piercing blue as a gaze.

* * *

Larxene is the first to disappear.

It takes a week, but finally they find her empty body, ribcage ripped apart to expose her insides to the sunlight. A rumour spreads among the school age children that her organs shone black and oily when the constable found her, lungs laced with arsenic and mold and crawling with all manner of horrible insects. The rumour quickly dies down once Axel and Marluxia and Saix get a hold of it, what remains of their quartet rougher than ever in their punishments.

Her parents are distraught, as any decent mother or father would be. Demyx can't bring himself to care for the girl's grim fate, though Roxas summons a few tears for her nonetheless. They go to her funeral hand in hand, Roxas hiding behind Demyx's arm when he catches sight of Axel. The redhead, for all his cocky sense of authority, looks lost. Green eyes harden when they clash with Roxas's bright, vivid blue, and the elder shoves between them with a harsh meeting of limbs. The little boy hisses out in pain when Axel brushes his still healing arm, and Demyx mollifies the hurt by slipping Roxas a lollipop he swiped from his mother's bureau.

It isn't a month later that Saix goes too, turning up facedown on the creek-bed. Marluxia and Axel take to clinging together, spending the night with one another and staying awake long, long after they should be dreaming. Roxas mentions the dark bags under their eyes to Demyx, notices the way their gazes flicker over their shoulders, even in the broadest daylight.

When Marluxia finally vanishes, Axel stops attending school. Demyx doesn't see him around for three weeks straight, and by this time summer break looms on the horizon, only a month away. Demyx vaguely wonders if the harvest will even happen this year. The whole town is in far too much disarray for there to be much weight on the prospect.

Two weeks after Marluxia turns up in the town square flower beds, Roxas stumbles upon the redhead leaned haphazardly against a tree stump, while Demyx struggles to pay attention in arithmetic. The red-headed boy is curled in on himself, face buried into his arms and shoulders heaving with the brunt of his sobs. The blond is shellshocked, unable to move as he watches the exquisite sight of Axel coming apart at the seams. It's strangely beautiful, de-idolizing in the extreme, and with the most courage he's mustered since his eleventh birthday, Roxas takes the few steps forward to sink to his knees.

Axel startles at the feel of two small hands pressing gingerly against his cheeks, bringing the terrified gaze up from his knees and into vast, vacuous blue. He freezes when Roxas moves his small, soft fingers across the bony curve of Axel's cheekbones, the boy's eyes watering with unshed tears of his own. "Don't be afraid," Roxas pleads quietly, leaning a few inches to press his lips chastely to Axel's forehead.

For a moment, the redhead is pliable beneath his fingers. Axel leans almost imperceptibly into Roxas's gentle hold, feeling at once safe and warm and protected-

But then absinthe eyes crystalize, hard emerald lacerating Roxas's expression clean in two. Hands, large, powerful hands grip Roxas by the shoulders and toss the boy aside like a gunnysack. The little blond rolls a few feet before settling in the dirt, tears springing unhindered to his eyes now as he tries vainly to lift his weight from his injured arm.

In the silence that follows, Axel is dumbstruck. His gaze flickers down to his hands in repugnance, then back to the struggling, whimpering blond, eyes wide in apology and conflict.

Axel does the last thing he can think of to do. He runs.

Demyx doesn't know why Roxas comes in that night, quiet and silent as the grave. He can only run his hands tenderly through the blond's tangled bird's nest of hair, desiring to heal and soothe.

When he finally tucks the little blond into bed and rolls into his own, the sleep that overtakes him is heavy, dragging, and blinding.

* * *

The music screeches into his ears, the sound no longer calming and easily melodic. Demyx collapses to his knees at the water's edge, clutching at both of his ears and pleading wordlessly for it all to be over.

The song crescendoes and crests like the waves of the lagoon, rising up and over Demyx's head until they're crushing him, deep down beneath the sand.

He forgets sunlight. He forgets how to breathe. He forgets everything but the feeling in his chest, the pain ripping him nearly in two. Muck rolls down his throat, down his shirt. It cakes along his pale skin, until Demyx feels its weight begin to squash him.

And then, disconcertingly, there is nothing. Demyx floats, body suspended in an invisible sea. Teal eyes widen in confusion, but not fear. He fears nothing in this world, for underneath even the mounting pain in his chest, there is a feeling of permanence about this place. Demyx feels inexplicably as if he belongs here.

His eyes widen at once when he realizes he is not alone. The piercing blue from his first dream so very, very long ago is once again a singular eye, peeking out from beneath a mop of hair, dark like winter wheat and rippling with electric power.

"You are so very strange, little one." The voice whispers into his ear in a symphonic legato though the other man's lips do not move. Demyx is all at once struck with a strong sense of attachment to the figure, because he too belongs here. Small hands with long, thin fingers ebb at the man's waist as a sharp blue eye appraises Demyx.

And he is oh so very beautiful, delusive and fey.

Before Demyx can ask the question that weighs heavy on his tongue, _are you him? are you the one?_, he wakens. Cold sweat pours down his forehead in glistening droplets, sticking his collar to his neck and creating a sense of urgency to the quiet night.

It's a long while before Demyx realizes what his mind is commanding he remedy.

He's laying on the floor next to Roxas's empty pallet. The little blond is gone. The door to Demyx's house rocks gently back and forth in the summer breeze, the rhythmic cadence of its edge tapping against the frame in a mocking euphony.

* * *

The next day, Demyx packs a satchel in secret and watches his mother cry for the first time in his life.

There are no words to describe the depth of his feeling at the sight of his mother's tears, nor the guilt that swells in his gut when he realizes his chance of not returning from his task. He knows deep down where the boy is and what has taken him, and he will travel to the ends of the earth to bring him back again. Were it anyone else, Demyx would have happily and obliviously moved on, but this was his Roxas. His beautiful boy. His ward. His treasure he had failed to protect.

He's halfway surprised to see Axel waiting for him at the forest's edge, lavender blotches ever-present beneath his eyes and a tightness to his features. The other half recognizes that they are the only two left. Still, the sight of the redhead makes his stomach churn and his jaw ache, and Demyx says little to him as he traipses toward the treeline.

"What are you doing?"

Demyx doesn't stop moving toward the menacing black branches of trees that twist treacherously in the morning light. It's cool inside the forest – no light penetrates through the thick canopy of the forest tops.

Axel calls after him again, something about Roxas, _where is Roxas?_, perhaps. Demyx registers the words but they don't click in his brain. It's as if his body has one goal, and one alone – saving Roxas, whether Axel knows about it or not.

He owes Roxas that much. Roxas, the illiterate farm rat. Roxas, the sunflower child. Roxas, the boy who saved him. The boy who was there when no one else was. The boy he loves as his own brother.

Axel's eyes widen when the maw of the treeline envelopes Demyx, swallowing him whole into the darkness beyond.

* * *

_The boy's body is limp and unresponsive. Demyx holds him in his hands and weeps over the slowly draining corpse. No attempt it made to stave off his tears when the phantom appears once again, eyes narrowed and curious. Demyx clutches Roxas closer and shouts in fervent determination. _

"_Please! I'll do anything—"_

"_Anything?"_

_The voice catches him off guard. It's the one from his dream, and as always, those thin lips never move. There are no illusions as to who the voice belongs. _

_Demyx steels his gaze, a few spare tears slipping through. He steels his gaze and he smiles, hopelessly. _

"_Anything."_

* * *

The forest is quiet for a month. Nothing escapes, and nothing enters.

It was his father that found out from Demyx's mother about Roxas's disappearance – the poor woman hasn't stopped crying in weeks.

Axel spends his days on the bank overlooking the forest edge, green eyes lined in blackening bruises and a jaw that aches from how hard his teeth grind. His heart never stops pounding against his ribcage, and his lips never stop forming the name of a forsaken little boy.

It isn't until he's met with the sight of tousled golden strands and eyes as vast and blue as an ocean trench that Axel feels his heart slow. In an instant, he's running, weakened, emaciated legs carrying him across the brook and toward the treeline. His lips part to call out to Roxas, but the boy drops hard in a dead faint mere inches from the forest's parted lips. Axel, fearing the worst, doesn't hesitate to take the boy back to the village, a hand in the hollow behind the boy's kneecaps and the other at the small of his back.

It takes two days, but Roxas finally wakes up. He says nothing of Demyx when asked; he claims he can't remember anything past the night he disappeared.

When they hold Demyx's funeral, Roxas and Axel stand side by side in the back pew. The little blond's face is buried at Axel's side and the elder's hand presses gently at his back, green eyes narrowed but stained with relief.

The last words are spoken to deaf ears. Axel and Roxas leave early, before anyone else has lifted their head from their handkerchief. They leave together in the dying glow of the setting sun, hands clasped together and tears streaming quietly from Roxas's eyes, gaping wide and gentian blue.

* * *

Demyx is never seen again in the village. But then, neither do children disappear anymore into the dark emptiness of the night. It's a fair trade, Axel thinks one day to himself, as he lounges against a tree stump and watches Roxas fish lazily in the brook.

It is often claimed that late, late on summer evenings, you can hear music from deep within the forest; beautiful music met with the accompaniment of one kind, gentle voice singing along.

In the end, no one ever enters the forest again, and the sound becomes that of legend.

The only two with any hints to its evidence die together years and years later, warm in a shared bed.

— _and they all lived happily ever after_.  
**the end.**


End file.
